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Comment by shadowoflight | Hacker News Reader

Have you considered using a DES display or Sharp Memory LCD? I know the first is definitely cheaper than a branded E-Ink display, and the latter has much faster refresh rate and may be more suited to being a terminal (and may also be cheaper than E-Ink, I just haven't looked into it).

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Yes we have considered it. Do you know of any such large (over 12 inches) panels with decent resolution and pretty fast updates that are available? Such a thing would probably help with power consumption. (e-inks consume a lot of power during screen updates).

Looking at all of the options a simple full RLCD would probably be best for us--not eink--but we can't find appropriate parts for the size and resolution.

I know that the DES displays go up to 10.1", but I haven't seen displays beyond that size (though I'm unsure if they intend to make larger displays in the future). For the Sharp Memory Displays, I think I may have spoken too soon - looks like they top out at 4.4" currently, which of course wouldn't work for your application.

RLCD is an interesting option, I guess the sacrifice there is readability angles and paper-like-ness?

Ones with good viewing angles exist, but for sure there isn't paper-like-ness and you loose the no zero-power persistence of e-ink. But you get fast, artifact-free refreshes, perfect sunlight readability, at very low power consumption. (No backlight which can be a pro and a con...if only a more modern Pixel Qi type panel existed.)

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